CAL NEWPORT: A World Without Email

TRANSCRIPT

[00:00:00] Mike Parsons: Hello and welcome to the moonshots podcast. It's episode 186. I'm your co-host Mike Parsons. And. I'm joined by the man with the plan, Mr. Mark Pearson Freeland. Good morning, mark. Hey, 

[00:00:13] Mark Pearson Freeland: good morning, Mike. Uh, in fact today, Mike, I think it should be mark listener. Favorite lover, Pearson Freeland, because we're diving into now the classic listener's favorite today.

[00:00:24] Aren't we, 

[00:00:25] Mike Parsons: we certainly are. And I would say we are going into what I would normally call a moonshot. Heavyweight. What do you think is, is our expert for this episode? Would you consider him to be a moonshot heavyweight? 

[00:00:41] Mark Pearson Freeland: This chap is not only immune shop's heavyweight, heres a moonshot astronauts. He is traveling around in the status space around the moonshot show.

[00:00:51] He is none other than author and a amazing thinker. Mr. Cal Newport and specifically Mike we're digging into [00:01:00] one of his more recent books, a world without email find, focus and transform the way you work for ever. 

[00:01:07] Mike Parsons: And I cannot think of anything more appropriate to be discussing if we are in a productivity Headspace, which is how to actually manage email, had to think about email.

[00:01:21] And it's a very provocative title. Isn't it? A world without email map, but there's some big ideas in this. 

[00:01:27] Mark Pearson Freeland: Well, we first interacted with a world without email, uh, as number a show number 135. And I think what stood out to me when we were digging into cal's book was the awareness around and the truth behind email.

[00:01:44] I think on the surface level, I was a little bit, uh, is this book going to be good? Is it all about emails? The history of emails that sounds a little bit dry. 

[00:01:55] Mike Parsons: Mike, I would even say, does email even deserve a book? Right? 

[00:01:59] Mark Pearson Freeland: Exactly. [00:02:00] Does it deserve a book? Does it deserve a show on the moonshots podcast, but really it comes down to the, um, very focused and almost a harsh look 

[00:02:11] Mike Parsons: that cow, uh, takes 

[00:02:13] Mark Pearson Freeland: us through when it comes to email because he calls out the fact and he calls all of us out.

[00:02:18] In fact, that emails tend to rule a lot of our lives. Don't they. 

[00:02:25] Mike Parsons: Not only that, but I think what's in store for our listeners in this show is Cal reveals. It was never designed to do so. So you've got something that's a running at least at a minimum, our professional life and maybe some of our personal life, but it was never meant to be a productivity suite.

[00:02:48] It was meant to be a messaging platform, but it has snuck in the back door and taken over the business world and it was never designed to do so. And I thought what was [00:03:00] so remarkable in this work, a world without email, by Cal Newport. For me, this is the big point mark. We have allowed email to dominate the way we work somewhat similar in the way we've allowed our mobile devices to play a huge role in our life.

[00:03:21] But at least. The iPhone were conscious of reducing screen time, there's even features and products to help you spend less time on your device. Even Instagram now is actually telling you to take a break. But here's the interesting thing. I don't think we re even realize how disruptive email is unlike those other technologies that I mentioned, I think were oblivious to how no, it's not meant to run your life.

[00:03:53] It's not a productivity suite, but yet we use it like that. And I think that's the wake up call in his [00:04:00] book, a world without email, don't you? 

[00:04:01] Mark Pearson Freeland: Yeah, he really calls us out. Doesn't uh, he invites us as he puts it in within the book to scrutinize how much we rely on these tools, such as email, you know, we've now conditioned ourselves to, uh, reach for the, the laptop or the phone or the iPad.

[00:04:19] Whenever a new email comes in. Uh, at least for me, Mike, I remember reflecting when we recorded the show that, uh, emails are my addiction more so than social media, because you never know what you're going to get is going to be either good news or is it going to be bad news? Sometimes bad news is good because then you can jump on it and it, you get a sense of achievement when you've put out that fire perhaps, or maybe you've responded to that email, but really that's again.

[00:04:47] Going back to your point, not the way that he designed to do it was designed to just to communicate something quite simply, but, and, 

[00:04:55] Mike Parsons: and ma though it's only meant to notify you, but we ended [00:05:00] up making it the format of some deep collaboration where there's so much potential for misinterpretation in tone of voice and everything.

[00:05:09] It's just wrong, wrong, wrong. And boy, I think county Newport has got so much to teach us in this book. Don't you, man? Yeah, 

[00:05:16] Mark Pearson Freeland: he really does. So Mike, let's stop making the case for county Newport, a world without email, and let's jump in. And this first clip we're going to have here is from Cal Newport himself.

[00:05:28] Introducing us to what ad hoc communication is. 

[00:05:32] Mike Parsons: The title of book would be a common fantasy for a lot of people in today's world. What do you think about. 

[00:05:37] Cal Newport: Yeah. I mean, this was the joke with my publisher was that the book was going to be shelved and the fantasy section at the bookstore once they saw the title, um, it does seem like a fantasy Intel.

[00:05:51] We elaborate a little bit what I mean by email, in that title. And when it turns out that I don't mean the technology of email, like those [00:06:00] protocols will go away. We all have to send faxes again, when it turns out that's not what I mean, but what I mean is a style of work. That's just driven by ongoing ad hoc communication.

[00:06:09] Suddenly it seems a lot less fantastical, I hope and seems a lot more, not just aspirational but necessary. 

[00:06:16] Mike Parsons: And when was it for you that this came onto your radar? That instant messaging using platforms like slack and email were becoming a problem? 

[00:06:25] Cal Newport: Well, so all the way back in 2016, that's when I published a book called deep work.

[00:06:31] And in deep work, I was talking about the importance of undistracted focus and it was really helping individuals. Like how do you train your ability to focus and make sure that you respect your ability to focus? It's really important for doing a lot of knowledge work. I was kind of dismissive in that book about why we didn't have a lot of focus work.

[00:06:48] I said, yeah, we're, we're on email too much. And, and we've become distracted. We've, we've lost sight of how important focus is I naively thought, oh, once people learned undistracted work, it's pretty [00:07:00] valuable. We could just change the way we run our organizations. And what became immediately clear when that book came out is that this way of working that requires us to be constantly tending all of these communication channels as deeply, deeply entrenched and it's systemic and causing a huge issue in the end is much deeper than just, oh, we had some bad habits.

[00:07:19] So I started working on this. It must've been almost immediately after deeper came out because when I went back and looked at my original research notebooks for this book, all of the original notes and interviews come from 2016. So I've really been working on this for over four years. 

[00:07:35] Mike Parsons: Well, he has done some deep work.

[00:07:37] Hasn't even been working on this for four, four or five years, man. You know, the thing I want to pull out of that clip is the systemic problem. Okay. So for me, what was really interesting is cows saying, well, look, you know, I thought, Hey, I wrote this big book on deep work, like folks, go get focused and do the deep work and what he's kind of saying, [00:08:00] that's not enough.

[00:08:03] And you and I celebrate deep work a lot on this show today. 

[00:08:08] Mark Pearson Freeland: We knew we we've spoken about deep work a lot. It's certainly how I know both of us structure our days. And I think the reason for that, at least for me, is, uh, the focus, you know, I, I am very guilty of being distracted by external forces and that could be a text to call an email or whatever it might be.

[00:08:32] And that's enough for me to suddenly blow my complete focus. And then I'll lose lots of time trying to get back into that, that initial line of 

[00:08:41] Mike Parsons: thought. Right? So, so because Cal has written about deep work let's, let's put this world without email and deep work together to make the case for the systemic problem that we all face.

[00:08:57] If I covered. [00:09:00] Two or three hour block to really tackle something. Let's say, I need to ride a masterclass. Let's say we're drafting a playbook for product discovery for a client. And this really needs deep attention. I will carve out this time. I will turn off every mode of distraction. I'll lock myself in the study.

[00:09:27] Um, the door is closed, the lights are deemed, and I go into the matrix. I generally find doing this in the morning is best. And so. This is my shot at doing deep work and deep work. If you can plan several of those moments within the week, you know, in my case, I'm, I'm pretty happy I can deliver the things that I need to do.

[00:09:51] Um, now what's really quite interesting is Cal thought, helping people do something like I just explained, like having a really deep session, [00:10:00] finding all the practices that you need to have to get the most out of that you felt that would be enough, but what he has realized in the context of his book, a world without email is that there is a much broader systematic system systemic problem.

[00:10:15] Here's what it is. It's even if I do that deeper, I am working across three major continents and time zones. So I received emails from Asia emails from the U S and emails from Europe. I am working across 250 plus employees. Uh, I produced a couple of podcasts. I do a thing or two I'm involved in some community things.

[00:10:40] So there is a ton of messages and notifications that surround the deep work that I just mentioned. And what cow's saying is the very inspirational work that he did. Very insightful work. He did around deep work, and we've actually done a full breakdown on deep work and many [00:11:00] of these other books. So go check out that back catalog @moonshots.io, if you're interested, but back to the context and the systemic problem is that even if I've done that deep work, I'm getting paid.

[00:11:13] A million different ways. I am getting notifications, text messages and emails and phone calls. And this is the context of what we call ad hoc communication. And the result of me spinning all those plates of communication means the thing that is at risk here is my focus. The thing that is a more larger here is the attention that I have for my work, because I'm jumping from thing to thing.

[00:11:46] And I think the journey that we're going on mark is that you and I, and all of our listeners, all the moonshot is we're going to work out how to get control of this raging beast of not only email, but [00:12:00] everything that is fighting to distract us, to take us away from deep work, from work that matters. Cool.

[00:12:09] Mark Pearson Freeland: I mean, that is a real promise. Isn't it? That's an exciting concept to try and crack down and listeners, if you are interested in, want to find out more about Cal Newport, we've got an episode on deep work. His book deep work was episode 15, eight, digital minimalism, 59. So good. They can't ignore you episode 60 and becoming a straight a student 61, but Mike we're really focusing on the deep work and to a certain extent, maybe digital minimalism has some crossovers with the world 

[00:12:39] Mike Parsons: without email as well.

[00:12:41] Yeah, it really does. So mark lead us through this journey, uh, of salvation. How do we arise above email? Where do we stop? 

[00:12:52] Mark Pearson Freeland: No, I like to begin with, with kind of day one, maybe it's my background and history. So before we get into figuring out [00:13:00] how we can rectify the situation of focus and email's getting in the way, let's actually start from hearing from cow, why email together so fast and understand a little bit about the history of email.

[00:13:14] Mike Parsons: Can you talk a little bit about when email really came onto the scene and how it's evolved since then it 

[00:13:19] Cal Newport: came fast? I think that's one of the interesting things I uncovered and the way I studied this actually is I went back into the New York times as business section archive and found every article that mentioned the word email in any configuration of the term email.

[00:13:35] And it changed over time. And so you could see it sporadically appear. Uh, as late as the late 1980s, they would put the word email in quotation marks. It wouldn't even be a capital E does mail in quotation marks. As late as the late 1980s, they were saying things like, well, this technology is around, but it didn't really live up to what we thought the promise would be.

[00:13:57] You get to the 1990 to [00:14:00] 1995, as you mentioned, nurses, very rapid, very rapid increase where suddenly email becomes this huge market. It becomes a half billion dollar a year market in just a couple years, it gets labeled the clear killer app of the 1990s. It goes from articles in the late 1980s where they're explaining to people what email is to 1995.

[00:14:21] This is one of the, if not the killer app of the entire decade, and one of the most important pieces of software of the entire decade. They said it's spreadsheets in the eighties, email in the nineties. So this is important to understand. It came really fast. And when it came, it took over everywhere. And one of the arguments I make is that it came so rapidly that we didn't really have time to step back and say, huh, how should we use this tool?

[00:14:47] What are the side effects of having this tool available? Will this change the way we work? Let's think through like, what's the right way to integrate this low friction communication to what we're already doing. None of that thinking happened. It just [00:15:00] rushed through the business sector, incredibly fast overhauled the way we were working often in ways that no one was really planning often in ways that wasn't intentional, it just took over and transformed all of our lives more or less without our permission.

[00:15:14] Oh my 

[00:15:15] Mike Parsons: gosh. When you put it in that context in my heart, this is like Corona virus of, of work is just kind of. Spread without our permission or intention, isn't it? 

[00:15:26] Mark Pearson Freeland: Yeah. That's why I like the way that he breaks down this. Albeit it could be a really boring topic near the history of email, but actually it's fascinating.

[00:15:36] It got introduced as a kind of digital tool. Nobody really knew about it. And within five years from the early nineties to 95, it became huge and people didn't really maybe understand what was going on around them as it was growing in usage and becoming, as he says so huge without our permission suddenly it's now something that 20 years later with still [00:16:00] using, uh, increasingly every, every year upon year it's, it's fascinating how much it got adopted and actually the impact that it ended up having on all of us is, is possibly still being found out.

[00:16:14] Mike Parsons: Well, yeah, I mean, let's put it in some, some contexts like the, um, we've got some great stats around how pervasive email has become, uh, the average office worker receives 121 emails a day. I just want you to imagine if you, in your letterbox at home, you've got 121 envelopes, right? So you'd be like, what the hell?

[00:16:40] Um, I think that's, that's really interesting. Um, check this out. Uh, most people obviously check their email daily, but 19% of people and mark, you might need to confess, this might be, you know, 19% check their email as soon as it hits the box. Yep. 

[00:16:58] Mark Pearson Freeland: I'm definitely one of those [00:17:00] 19%. Can you imagine how distracted that?

[00:17:04] Mike Parsons: Oh my gosh. Um, um, and check this. 9% of us workers constantly check work email outside of working hours. So it's evening with family, with friends, it's the weekend with the kids or doing something like some exercise or whatever. 9% of us workers constantly, constantly check their work email outside of work out.

[00:17:29] So here is something that was never designed to be the beating heart of business. And not only is it the main tool, but it's running rampant through our lives. 

[00:17:42] Mark Pearson Freeland: It is the classic definition of a, of an addiction, right? Like, say, you're, you're on your weekend, you're relaxing your annual with your family, your kids, and you're distracted.

[00:17:54] You're putting yourself, remember this is statistics based on choice. You know, people [00:18:00] don't have to check their work emails as well. Mostly you don't have to check your email that sort of working on something, but you are inclined to you feel as though it's the right thing to do. And that I think is it's kind of like an addiction, isn't it?

[00:18:13] You constantly want to be almost reassured when I check my emails on the weekend or in the evening and the evenings after I've closed the laptop and I'll go on my iPad or phone, I'll be doing it for, for relief. I'll be looking for reassurance that something hasn't come in that needs immediate attention.

[00:18:32] So I'll be referring back to it thinking, okay, well, I wonder let's just double check. Let's just make sure that. So-and-so got what they needed. Let's make sure that the email I sent wasn't causing any confusion. And it's the referring back to it consistently, I think is where that inefficiency can start to come from.

[00:18:52] Mike Parsons: Well, let's, let's um, just put this in context of this systemic problem that we [00:19:00] face is the average user. Okay. So now I'm going to jump away from email for a second. And another thing that's taking over people's lives is how often do you think the average user checks Facebook 

[00:19:14] Mark Pearson Freeland: a day? Mark? Oh, it's got to be more than twice.

[00:19:20] Maybe two, three times. I reckon 

[00:19:23] Mike Parsons: 13 to eight times. 

[00:19:27] Mark Pearson Freeland: I didn't. I now listen, is that was a, that was a genuine reaction. I didn't know that that was, that was how high it was. 

[00:19:33] Mike Parsons: So here's the thing. This is why this systemic problem is so important to get on top of, um, because we're just, I mean, we are getting blitzed here, uh, from F from left, from right from top, from bottom.

[00:19:46] And, you know, we have talked about, uh, in the echo total show of the monkey mind, right? So the mind has the habit of, you know, running away with things with all of this stimulus, it is gonna go [00:20:00] bonkers and it's going to be very hard to do focus, work, and cow has some thoughts on that. So let's have a listen to Cal Newport and the context of his brand new book, a world without email.

[00:20:11] Let's listen to him talking about the hyperactive hive mind 

[00:20:16] Cal Newport: by 2000. Yeah. You have people complaining about overload? It did not take very long before. We felt completely overwhelmed by the amount of email that we were answering. It was in the mall of this newly emergent email overwhelm that we then throw smartphones into the picture.

[00:20:33] And what this did is it extended the temporal boundaries of this hyper communicative approach to work so that now you could be a part of all this back and forth before you got to the office, you could be a part of all this back and forth when you're home in the evening on the weekends, when you're at your kid's soccer games on vacation.

[00:20:51] And so it was a really unfortunate, I think, coming together of technologies because we got this workflow, which I call the hyperactive [00:21:00] hive, mind, everyone just works things out on the fly ad hoc communication that emerged. Metastasize got overwhelming. And almost immediately after that, we found a way to take that hyperactive hive mind with us everywhere.

[00:21:12] We went. That combination, I think has led since the last 10 to 15 years in a real sense of exhaustion and unhappiness with a lot of knowledge workers with their relationship with these tools and their work. Yeah. 

[00:21:25] Mike Parsons: It's just like now we're, we're creeping into nights and the weekends and there's just, there's no barrier.

[00:21:31] Cal Newport: Yeah. And, and here's the, here's the key part. I think this is foundational to the, the optimistic vision I ultimately give we, when we think about improving these habits, I think we too often just focus on ourselves and our own personal habits and we think, well, I just need better hacks if I just didn't check email on weekends, I'd be better.

[00:21:50] If I batched, when I checked my emails, that would be better if I just promulgated clear expectations about response times, that would be better. We sort of put it on ourselves, but one of my big arguments is [00:22:00] the reason why we don't gain any traction. With these hacks and this tips, and this advice is because what we're not realizing is the underlying workflow by which we are collaborating in most of these teams and organizations is one that depends on unstructured back and forth ad hoc communication.

[00:22:18] So as long as this hyperactive high mind workflow is basically the primary way that you collaborate. You can't get away from it. And then when you do try to get away from it, when you say I'm going to do a Tim Ferris auto responder twice a day, that's all I'm going to check email. It doesn't stick because actually you have to check email more because you have two dozen different ongoing processes.

[00:22:39] Each of which has their own asynchronous conversation going back and forth. And you cannot let those all die for four hours because it's going to slow down other people, everything is going to stop. And the, the, the big sort of foundational message in my optimistic vision is forget the hacks up here.

[00:22:53] When we're thinking about our relation to the. We have to replace the processes down here. We have to [00:23:00] actually replace the hyperactive hive mind with specific alternatives that specify for this type of work. This is how we communicate about it. Here's how we share information about it. Here's how we coordinate about a here's, how it works.

[00:23:12] We have to create these processes that are explicit alternatives that just, Hey, let's just rock and roll an email if we're ever going to escape from our inboxes. And so I call that optimistic. I mean, it's harder, but it helps us explain why we've had no success. Just trying to at the upper levels, I would see better advice.

[00:23:27] We need better habits. We need better hacks Merlin, Mann's inbox zero. We can solve this problem. Now we've got to fix the processes. That's harder, but if you do it, you can significantly reduce the pressure of the inbox and get to the world. Without email I'm talking about, which is a world, not where email doesn't exist, but where emails like your physical mailbox, maybe once a day, you check it.

[00:23:45] There's some stuff in there. It's convenience better than a fax machine, but it's not at the center of how you actually collaborate and get things done. 

[00:23:52] Mike Parsons: Huge, huge, huge. 

[00:23:55] Mark Pearson Freeland: A reality check, 

[00:23:57] Mike Parsons: isn't it? Yeah. He kind [00:24:00] of poses a dilemma to us, right. That we live in this ad hoc, collaborative world. We need these ad hoc back and forth, but we can't let email be the mechanism for that.

[00:24:13] And that was kind of the promise of slack, wasn't it? Yeah. Like I think slack tried that, but they said, well, you know, well with less email or whatever they promised, but it kind of just was another 13, their inbox in the end. Wasn't it, it's 

[00:24:26] Mark Pearson Freeland: kind of the same, you know, as, as, as cow calls out. And I think you touched on this earlier as well.

[00:24:31] The, whether it's email or slack or instant messaging, it's still very, um, instantaneous, distracting and ad hoc. So again, as cow calls out, if you had a mailbox like your letterbox and you were receiving all of these. Communications from all these different people think are overwhelming. That would be whether it's slack, email, or text, it's enormously overwhelming.

[00:24:59] [00:25:00] And it leads to that unhappiness, those barriers get broken down. You don't have enough rest or enough time to do that deep work. It's far too distracting. 

[00:25:12] Mike Parsons: Exactly. Right. So, so let's actually dig into this a little bit. Um, and, um, I think we've made the case that there is this, um, you know, there's overload.

[00:25:24] Um, and that's, without a doubt, whether, you know, it's the 13 times we check Facebook or whether it's the gazillion times we're checking email. Okay. So we're overloaded, but what was quite interesting there is this case that he was making, that we have to kind of work in this ad hoc collaborative. And mark.

[00:25:46] I think what we should actually do is define what that is, because if we're going to reroute some of the communication, we should first work out. Well, what exactly are we talking about here? And, um, for [00:26:00] me, the, the, the flow of, uh, potentially a project starts with someone saying, Hey, we should do this, or we need to solve this problem.

[00:26:09] And then everyone says, okay, let's have a meeting to discuss, right. And there's back and forth, um, uh, about, you know, scheduling the time. Um, and then we all get together, then we've realized, okay, here's the problem. Maybe we need a couple of meetings working in this ad hoc conversational way. Okay. We've agreed on the problem.

[00:26:31] Okay. We've agreed on what the outcomes should be, but we still need to work out how we're going to get there. Then we have another meeting to say, like next steps, what's the process. And then we have to have like a doctor. A brief. And then the brief changes, then we have deliverable documents where people are like, okay, here's a potential program that we could run, or here's a test that we could do.

[00:26:56] And those documents need to be reviewed, discussed, enhanced, edited, [00:27:00] and so on and so forth. So we don't have a way of working where the answer and the context is explicit and clear at the start it's emergent. And that emergence gets better. As we share ideas, have discussions, make suggestions, maybe we violently disagree along the way.

[00:27:22] This is what ad hoc ways of working look like collaboration, problem solving, emergent strategy. And so at some point a project is complete and you may have hundreds of emails and meetings and so forth. I think. This is the way most of us work and that we are more and more working like this as knowledge workers.

[00:27:50] So the conundrum is this emergent, iterative, collaborative ad hoc way of working that cow's pointing out. That's not going anywhere. [00:28:00] It's problem solving, which is at the heart of, and being a knowledge worker. Right? So the challenge is to understand that email should not be as dominant in our way of working in supporting this ad hoc collaborative way of working.

[00:28:19] It should prove out it should play a different role, but I think to capture the heart of his book, the first big insight, it's like, hang on a second. You're using. Uh, to that is not well suited for ad hoc and you've put it right at the center. It can play a role, like he talked about like your normal letterbox, check it once a day, but you shouldn't be checking it continuously all the time inside and outside of work.

[00:28:53] It's not designed for that. And a lot of things that are happening in email should never have been in email [00:29:00] at all. Exactly. It is a big wake up call. Isn't it? The 

[00:29:05] Mark Pearson Freeland: big wake up call, but, and you're right to point out that it's not going to go. You know, this it's still going to maintain in dominance in the way that we all collaborate and work, particularly when people work in different locations now, and now there are more and more platforms popping up.

[00:29:22] And this fear of not replying as, and when you get the email is because it's so easy, you're sending an email is very, very easy, but your right to have that difficult conversation to raise a concern, or maybe it's a question, whatever it might be that needs to be handled delicately. Sometimes it's kind of easy just to send a quick email.

[00:29:44] Isn't it? 

[00:29:46] Mike Parsons: Well, I mean, look, let's talk about the trap of perceived productivity, right? So often you get this distinct feeling that people are sending email where they're kind of hitting the [00:30:00] tennis ball back over the net and saying, it's back on you. It's your shot. Classic thing is when people send incomplete work to you, here it is.

[00:30:11] And you're like, Hey, on a second, this doesn't seem to be complete. The other thing is when, rather than starting their work, they're just asking a question back when they could have said, look, I've taken a shot at it, but I still have some questions. So what happens is people get stuck in, in, in this, uh, linear back and forth being bumping, bumping bound when the work's not getting done, but they're perceiving I'm working on it.

[00:30:40] I'm clarifying. I mean, folks, get on the bloody phone and talk it through now, stop doing their ping bombing, which might take over occur over the course of several days. Um, w this is where we are. This is where we are. We [00:31:00] have a collaborative ad hoc way of working fundamentally. That's not changing, but we've got a non ad hoc collaborative tool running the show and cows like ladies and gentlemen, this is your problem and you need to solve it.

[00:31:17] And it's, it's random. Isn't it? Mark. So, I mean, this is something that, that needs a little bit of work. Yeah. It's 

[00:31:23] Mark Pearson Freeland: unstructured. It's unscheduled. I think that's another distinction that I would place this type of communication versus scheduled phone conversations. And by phone conversations, I would include, you know, zoom, video calls and so on when you're talking to somebody one-on-one or as a team that's, uh, that's kind of like, cool, isn't it.

[00:31:45] So that's. That's scheduled, you know what you're going to be discussing, you know, there's gender. And there's an objective where everybody leaves the core, hopefully on the same page, hopefully they know which direction everybody should be moving towards. [00:32:00] But yeah, the email workflow or the cows pointing out to us is it just is so inefficient.

[00:32:06] It leads us to maybe more confusion. Like you say, it leads to delayed start dates and timelines, deadlines are thrown off because nobody wants to have to take ownership. You know, ownership is such a huge part of a lot of the work that we cover in the moonshot show. Isn't it? Ownership of your organization, your structure, your process.

[00:32:27] And if you use email in the way that we're sort of discussing, as you know, I'm going to be, I'll put my hand up, Mike. Yeah. I've used email like that before I try not to now use it in such an unstructured way, but I'm sorry. I still fall into the trap. 

[00:32:44] Mike Parsons: Yeah. Yeah. Well, I think we all do because as we've made the case, um, email is as really.

[00:32:53] Systemically everywhere, running everything. And so that's why we've got to fight the good fight. And it [00:33:00] starts with, you know, your personal awareness and your, your, uh, your mindset. Um, so I mean, this is, we've set the stage perfectly to think about how we might tackle these challenges. And that's what we're going to do in the second half of the show, but what we want to tackle right now, mark, I think we should celebrate those of you who are listening to us, our audience, all over the world, who are joining up as members as we have so much exciting news.

[00:33:27] So, uh, we've started our own little, uh, Patreon, uh, sign up area where you can become a member. And we're really grateful to everyone who's signing up. I mean, it is so great to get your support and we put in so much work into this show, as you can tell every week, or there's so much research and production that gets done.

[00:33:52] All of the show notes, get poetry. It's all for you, our listeners. So you can be the best version of yourselves. And we really do appreciate it when you become [00:34:00] a member, which you can do @moonshots.io, because by becoming a member, you help us pay for our hosting, uh, all over our podcasting services that help with our distribution.

[00:34:13] Um, and, uh, we've got quite a team working on this, so that. Uh, really, really appreciated that support. Um, you can become a member and, um, mark, I think what is it? It's like a dollar a week, a dollar a show. That's pretty good. Isn't it? Dollar 

[00:34:30] Mark Pearson Freeland: a show. And listen, as you have our word for it, it's a pretty exciting.

[00:34:35] Series actually. I mean, we, as you can hear Mike and I, we get pretty animated and get pretty passionate in our weekly show, but this was another level. Wasn't it? Mike getting into the master series and approaching it in a slightly different way. Taking the lessons. 

[00:34:52] Mike Parsons: Yeah. Yeah. Sorry, sorry. Just to jump into for a bit of context there.

[00:34:56] What Mark's talking about is something that our [00:35:00] members get. So, um, why don't you set it up first? Uh, you just need to, to share with them what this moonshot master series is and how it's for all your 

[00:35:09] Mark Pearson Freeland: you're. Totally right, Mike. Thank you. There you go. Listeners. You could hear me getting so excited. I didn't even explain what I was talking about.

[00:35:15] So for those who have joined us on Patreon, you can come and join us via moonshots.io and become a member. Click on the member button at the top of the screen, you can join us as we go into a deep dive, into new exciting masterclass. And we're calling the moonshots master series and within the master series, Mike, you and I would dig into ways to improve ourselves the way we think about our work and our approach to leadership.

[00:35:43] And every month we're going to publish a new episode. In addition to our weekly moonshots series that is specifically deep diving into growth areas, such as personal transformation, problem solving and decision-making and leadership. And our first [00:36:00] episode, Mike, that was a good one. It was good, fun, digging into motivation, something that's so intrinsic to how we all work nowadays and your focus and our drive.

[00:36:12] And we touched on a number of different mediums and formats within the master series that you can join via patron. And moonshots.io that we haven't been able to do in our weekly session. 

[00:36:25] Mike Parsons: Right. Right. Well, it's, it's um, the luxury that we're afforded by having done 135 shows, we've sort of discovered a secret source of patent haven't we, I mean, because we've done so many shows for our first moonshot master series, we were very, very fortunate.

[00:36:46] Um, we were able to dig around and discover, uh, a really, um, a breadth of, uh, clips and thinking around [00:37:00] motivation. We literally handpicked the best shows that we've ever done, where you literally went and found an amazing collection of expertise of innovators, uh, academics, cracking through motivation. And we were able in one show mark in one show, who are we able to include in this master series?

[00:37:23] Mark Pearson Freeland: And through some of our most popular superstars, like David Goggins, Lady Gaga, Gary V, to really understand where motivation comes from, you know, where does it start and how to get inspired to become motivators. 

[00:37:40] Mike Parsons: And you can't just assume that you have motivation, you got to work on it. There was something else that we discovered in the show.

[00:37:46] We use some, uh, some profound academic work there self-determination theory. We broke that down and we finished it off with like a, a nice little palette cleanser of James clear and Jordan Peterson really bringing [00:38:00] it home around motivation. So here's the thing, uh, for you and listeners, if you become a member, you will get access.

[00:38:10] Exclusive access to the moonshot master series, where we turn the show upside down. We don't just study one person. We bring together all the work on a particular theme. So you get 90 minutes, a masterclass that will give you inspiration. It'll give you understanding, but it will help you make it a daily habit for you all in service of you being the very best version of yourself.

[00:38:41] So head over to moonshots.io, become a member. It's like a dollar a show, and you still get this show as well. I mean, you get two shows. I mean, that's such a great deal that moonshots dot. Become a member and you will get to enjoy the moonshot master series of which we are [00:39:00] going to publish a teaser of that, um, a couple of days after this show.

[00:39:03] So if you're listening to this show, uh, stay tuned because a few days after you will get a teaser for our moonshot master series on motor vation. Woo. 

[00:39:14] Mark Pearson Freeland: I'm excited. And I hope listeners, you are too. It's going to be a wild ride. 

[00:39:19] Mike Parsons: It is. And I feel like now that we have made the case for the master series, Coincidentally about motivation.

[00:39:27] I am very motivated to find out these two cracking principles that are going to help us lead us to salvation, to save us from the arch enemy, which is email. So mark, where do we begin on these new principles that Cal Newport has created? Yeah, there's some fascinating 

[00:39:43] Mark Pearson Freeland: principles that county pool goes into with regards to, uh, email and what he was just touching on that previous clip mic about the hyperactive hive, mind thinking, how can I change my workflows and processes?

[00:39:56] And there's a couple of big principles that we're going to dig into on the show today. [00:40:00] And this first principle is called the attention capital principle, and there's a fantastic, um, YouTube. Who's going to break it down for us. This is from early our breaking down cows advice. And this first principle that we're going to hear about is the attention capital.

[00:40:16] The attention 

[00:40:16] Early Owl: capital principle basically say that if we can find better and more sustainable workflows, we can significantly increase the productivity of knowledge workers. And you want to optimize workflows around protecting people's attention and analogy he uses in the book is comparing it to the factory worker and how Ford revolutionized productivity in the manual labor markets.

[00:40:39] And he feels like we are doing a similar revolution in the knowledge markets where we are currently very inefficient. There's two paths when it comes to protecting people's attention, it is either making systemic changes, which is what a company can do. But what most of us have to deal with. Making our own personal changes.

[00:40:58] One thing he [00:41:00] suggests when making personal changes is that you shouldn't announce it to the world. You should just try to make a change that is reasonable, and that keeps you more time to focus and your attention should be on never dropping the ball and delivering value. And if you manage to do that and people know they can trust you, then they won't complain.

[00:41:16] If you take an hour or two more to respond to emails or slack than other people, 

[00:41:21] Mike Parsons: a more sustainable way of working on that already sounds pretty good. But Hey, how exciting is this idea that, um, we have to look at our attention as a resource and that, um, much like Henry Ford did with the idea of a factory setup revolutionize the way we produce things.

[00:41:47] We are due for a revolution on the way we produce ideas. And that is with our attention. I mean, I think that's the logic structure, isn't it? Yeah. It's, 

[00:41:55] Mark Pearson Freeland: it's a little bit of a, um, cognitive thing. [00:42:00] Isn't it. If you replace the Ford motor car delivery line with your mindset, think about your focus and your approach to work and questioning.

[00:42:14] Okay. Why is what I'm doing right now? The most efficient way to do. Probably not. There's always ways to make things more efficient. So think about it. Like you say, as a resource, it's finite, it's an exhaustible and Mike Lee we've, we've all got to that point where you, your brain almost starts to shut down.

[00:42:32] You know, maybe you've done so much work where you've had so many different distractions and you've had one of those days where you haven't really, you feel like you've done a lot, but you haven't really finished anything. You start to get really tired then you, and that attention capital is suddenly feels very, very, you've used so much of it.

[00:42:49] Then now your focus is just getting lower and lower and more narrow and narrow. And it does feel as though it's, it's like fuel, you know, it kind of, or your [00:43:00] CPU, it starts to write down. 

[00:43:03] Mike Parsons: Yeah. So there are so many things you can do, uh, to, uh, improve your attention. Let's let's just park, um, The deep work, because we've done a show on deep work.

[00:43:17] And I, and I want to make sure that we focus on the allocation of our attention. Uh, think of it as a precious resource. Imagine that we start every single day with a fixed amount of attention. Let's say there's a hundred units. Let's take a cow's inspiration here. And let's kind of work through this together.

[00:43:38] Mike let's imagine you and I both started the day with a hundred units of attention. How do you. Protect and nurture that attention to distribute it across your personal and professional life in a balanced way in a, a big word here seems to be sustainable. I think after [00:44:00] the progress of technology and then being hit with Jo quarantine and work from home, I think we're all feeling a little burnt out.

[00:44:07] So this sustainability is about redefining the way we work so that we can be more satisfied, more fulfilled in the things that we do at work. And so how would you start the process mark of protecting your attention for a day? Let's imagine there's a day, let's say it's today. How are we going to, uh, nurture, protect that attention and make sure that it is given to the right things.

[00:44:36] What are some of the things you might do to. Nurtured protect that your attention, your, your concentration, your intention. Well, I th I 

[00:44:45] Mark Pearson Freeland: think to, to, uh, try and, uh, consciously avoid going down the, the deep work consideration or recommendation, I think prioritization is another word that I would try and use.

[00:44:58] What I mean by that [00:45:00] is try to understand and challenge yourself to identify what are the most well I'm fat. Mike, were you and I, we were talking about this the other day, most urgent versus important items on your agenda. 

[00:45:17] Mike Parsons: So very good. Yeah. So that's the Eisenhower matrix, right? Exactly. Not falling victim for only urgent things, which would be a classic email thing.

[00:45:25] Wouldn't it, it wouldn't be classic email 

[00:45:27] Mark Pearson Freeland: thing because it's unstructured. So it comes in, it's kind of like something getting thrown over your fence. You've got to go and attend to it. Let me go and see somebody knocking at the door. I better get up and go and see who it is. Getting an email for me. It kind of feels a bit like that because it drags you away from something else.

[00:45:43] So rather than attending, only to the urgent things, and at least in this initial point of view, or at least in this stage, emails are kind of the most important or urgent thing in our minds. Instead of falling into that trap, I'll try and [00:46:00] prioritize what needs to happen. What do I need to do? This 

[00:46:04] Mike Parsons: is number one.

[00:46:05] And I think I'm time blocking and allocating those priorities, those important things to your calendar. I think you were really right. That that would be like starting today. If we were thinking about it from this attention, capital or principal from county board, you would think about what is not only urgent, but important for today.

[00:46:25] Maybe we would expand a little bit to having a look at your calendar for the week and allocating time accordingly so that you are attending to things that really matter. I actually, I really liked that and I, I must say that, um, one of the things I experienced is when I take a good look at my task list and my calendar for the week, and I have gone through it and allocated some time blocks to activity.

[00:46:57] I literally feel a level of [00:47:00] calmness. Like I noticed how much more children I am, cause I can see. Okay. I've allocated time to doing that then. So it frees me from thinking about it for now, because I know I, yet tomorrow I've allocated 90 minutes for that. So that's cool. I know that's allocated and I know that the time is there.

[00:47:19] Mark Pearson Freeland: Yeah. I think that's a huge insight actually, when you, when you do allocate the time and even if it is in the future, you know, even if you can't get onto it today, instead you put it on tomorrow. Like I say, there is that big relief and you do. I actually experienced it as well. You feel that sense of good I've I've addressed it.

[00:47:42] I haven't forgotten about it. I know when I'm going to do it. So now that part of my brain, that 10% or those 10 points of my brain from the 100. Required on it today so I can repurpose it for something else. Yeah. There's no anxiety in the back of the mind. 

[00:47:59] Mike Parsons: [00:48:00] Totally. Um, the other thing, um, that comes to my mind now that, um, you know, we've made time for deep work with how to look at the calendar, we've got the important versus urgent.

[00:48:13] I actually think that there's a bunch of smaller habits that we can develop, um, to, to really help us, um, you know, put our resource of focus and attention. Um, not only to put it to good use, but um, like a garden, you need to water it and fertilize it. So, um, there's a number of things, uh, that I think are important, which is if you want to really.

[00:48:48] Think about your attention and focus as a valued resource? I think the first thing is you have basics of good sleep, exercise and [00:49:00] diet. I cannot tell you that if, if how important for example diet is before. For example, I was working on a massive report yesterday. I'd done some exercise in the morning. I had done some, uh, some basic, uh, admin and so forth.

[00:49:17] And then I launched into this big effort and I deliberately ate a salad. I ate vegetarian and I ate this salad. It was a medium to smaller size portion. Cause here's what mark, when I eat a light salad, I feel energized and I have literally no post meal lethargy. And so I can just keep cranking this huge report out.

[00:49:48] I can just smash it out because if I go for something heavier, like some really good long-lasting carbs, let's say oats or rice, [00:50:00] I can feel it in my body. Am I oh, and what happens? What wanes, when you, when you've taken a heavy meal, your attention, your focus, you know, oh, I can't be bothered now. You know, I'm having a cart.

[00:50:12] What do they call it? Yeah. Like a carb coma, carb coma, 

[00:50:16] Mark Pearson Freeland: carb crash. 

[00:50:17] Mike Parsons: Yeah. So I think those are really important if you want to be able to focus and think, well, you need to actually have that, that, um, that, um, basic it's almost hygiene cost of entry stuff. Good sleep, good food, good exercise. A good well-structured managed.

[00:50:37] Um, time allocation calendar. I think these are all, once you start thinking of your attention as a, as a valued piece of capital, it's like your house, you take care of it, your attention, you take care of it, don't you? Yeah. You 

[00:50:54] Mark Pearson Freeland: really, really do. I think that's such an interesting comparison to think about it [00:51:00] as a valuable resource.

[00:51:01] And then, and there's another principle there, Mike, that we should get into. And again, it's introduced to us via early hour. Who's done a great breakdown of a, of cows next principle. And this is understanding some of the processes that are attached to understanding or maximizing that say the amount of work that you do get out of that, that finite attention or, or resource.

[00:51:25] So this next principle that we're going to be hearing from early out is county Newport's process. 

[00:51:31] Early Owl: The process principle is basically that we can significantly increase productivity and reduce stress by introducing smarter processes. He outlines three important steps for processes. One is that it should be easy to see who is working a lot too, is that work can unfold without a significant amount of ad hoc communication.

[00:51:53] Three is that there is a known way for updating work assignments. As the process progresses, he basically highlights [00:52:00] two ways to go about this one is a fully automated process. One way I've seen this implemented is some youth tubers use this for editing videos, where there is a step-by-step process of who is responsible for doing most parts of the video.

[00:52:14] And the process just takes care of whose job it is to do what, and they don't need to talk or organize about who is doing land. Follow us the process there's other types of work that it will be harder to do an automatic process for things like design or developing a project that has a lot of back and forth in cases like that.

[00:52:31] He suggests using boards with columns and cards on these columns. So things like Trello or JIRA or flow is something else. He mentioned. The main goal here is to get the communication out of slack and email. And instead of gathering all the communication about specific tasks on the specific cards in the board, this also means that you can make it easier to see what you should prioritize at any given moment.

[00:52:56] Instead of just having a bunch of things coming in 

[00:52:58] Mark Pearson Freeland: from everywhere. 

[00:52:59] Mike Parsons: Oh [00:53:00] my gosh. Another, this process principle is so critical because the downfall of the work being distributed into people's inboxes means that let's say you're working on something with me, mark. There is stuff stuck in your inbox that I don't see that I can't build upon the work that you're doing exactly.

[00:53:28] Right. So if you, if you don't have a centralized single source of truth, like a sauna, Trello, JIRA confluence, if you don't have a centralized place that is the work and you just rely on sending emails back and forth then, well, first of all, you've got a threaded conversation, which is, have you, have you ever had this thing where you're in Gmail and you're like trying to track the conversation?

[00:53:56] I always say it's a five, six thread conversation. [00:54:00] I find it really hard to visually go through that. I'm like, where the hell is the content? Like I can't work out. Who said what said it's terrible. It's a single source of truth. It 

[00:54:11] Mark Pearson Freeland: works. It's frustrating to understand. He said, she said, uh, but also in threads, not all the attachments will be there.

[00:54:21] So if you get injuries, let's say a week or so, or you're onboarding a new team member. And the project is, uh, is already in a flow. If you don't have that single source of truth, where are they going to get all the information? It just becomes very, very unclear. And those, I just want to break down three of the mentions that came up in that clip for our listeners, because I know it was quite quick.

[00:54:44] It was clarity, find presses that are held with clarity, which I think to your point, my email threads and so on, no clarity there ad hoc communication, remove opportunities when people can come in without a hot communication, which as we know [00:55:00] from some of our early eclipse and Cal Newport's book, ad hoc communication leads to frustrations and inefficiencies.

[00:55:07] And also the third breakdown. The third element is you need to find a way to update as you. And again, to your point, just then Mike, having the ability to update through whether it's a sauna or Trello or confluence, it's, it's clear to me. I know where everything is. I can remove those ad hoc inputs cause I can see those threads and I can see the way that it's updating, evolving and growing dynamically in a very clear.

[00:55:36] Mike Parsons: Yes. So, so a build on this is like email is not a single source of truth. It is, um, a delivery of a message yet we are using it as the work. So a great example would be for this very show, we have a run sheet for every single show, which has all the research and background, the final selected clips. That's a [00:56:00] repository, but we also have a very clear way of working.

[00:56:04] We have a researcher who works to researching against the shows that we have coming up. We have editorial meetings, we have statistics and analysis of all the analytics that we've got going on. So we know what people are enjoying. My point is this. You need to be really clear on how you're going to work.

[00:56:27] My experience in my career is that very rarely do teams get explicit about the process. They it's sort of an organic answered thing and particularly new people, they just have to kind of work it out. It's crazy. Isn't it like how, how many times in your career do you see people having explicit conversations about how will we work together?

[00:56:54] Not talking about what are we working on and how are we going to approach it? [00:57:00] I mean, 

[00:57:00] Mark Pearson Freeland: so much time, you know, it's, it's really challenging to try and do this with new team members, new, uh, companies, clients, customers, partners. It's very, very difficult to do all this via closed walled gardens, such as email, for example.

[00:57:22] Mike Parsons: Yes. And I think the best way to make the process principle that county board has mentioning the best test of it is. Can your colleagues continue working when you're not answering emails? 

[00:57:39] Mark Pearson Freeland: Yes. That's a good test. Isn't it 

[00:57:42] Mike Parsons: for that to be true. You need a single source of truth, a centralized place, which is accessible and is full of up-to-date information.

[00:57:55] So if you're working on building a brand new product, the user story has to be [00:58:00] well-written and clear, and the thinking behind it needs to eat it. And if it's not. What's going to happen is people need to be able to search for and find it. The true test is when people cannot find information quickly, they will resort to email.

[00:58:17] Can you please send me how many times do we get those emails? Can you please send me? Well, actually, if you're receiving that, that's telling you that you're not centralizing your workflow, you're not adhering to this process principle. It should be such that your collaborators can continue work because they have the information that they need in a centralized spot.

[00:58:38] That's the process principle working well, the process taking care of itself, if it can continually requires mark, could you please send me that file again, like these kinds of things or, um, poor, um, uh, revision and change management on a double. You know, that's [00:59:00] when people like, I don't understand. Right?

[00:59:02] So you, you have to produce work in a centralized place that has contextual, and it has the information that somebody coming in who needs to work independently and autonomously can get the information and say, great, I know exactly what I need to do. Oh, it's funny. Isn't 

[00:59:20] Mark Pearson Freeland: it? Because when you do break it down, it sounds so sensible and arguably sensible, but for some reason we're all, or some of us, at least, including myself, you get caught in the same, the same cycle of just relying on email when even though it's so clearly inefficient.

[00:59:41] Mike Parsons: Well, I think it's just, uh, in part, because we're falling into the trap of thinking that the email was sufficient, but I think Cal has got a big bucket of ice he's tinted on our head and said, No way, baby. This has got to be done in a [01:00:00] different way. And I mean, that's the power of he's thinking. That was what was so great about deep work.

[01:00:04] That's what's so great about his other books in this book as well is he's really making a case for changing how we work so we can not only be more productive, but I think cow has a big quality effect on, on all of us. And that's why I think he's so special. The humor. Oh, absolutely. There's 

[01:00:25] Mark Pearson Freeland: so much we can, we can get from, from Cal and you know, it's, it's just been fascinating to hear him take his scientific approach and break it down and easy to understand ways that we can action from two.

[01:00:40] Mike Parsons: Absolutely. Absolutely. So I think mark, it would only be fitting to leave the last thought to count Newport himself. So this is his advice on how we should use email now, post COVID post pandemic. What is the best way to use email? 

[01:00:58] Well, 

[01:00:58] Cal Newport: I mean, this is part of the reason [01:01:00] why email makes us miserable.

[01:01:02] There's really interesting research. I talk about where we can study this effect of misinterpretation happens all the time. And the problem is, is the sender of an email. When they're sending a message, they're basically hearing this message in their minds, voice. So they're hearing inflection, they know the context, they know it's a joke, they know whatever.

[01:01:22] And to them, they vastly overestimate how clear this is that text arrives, stripped of all that context, just linguistic contact and the receiver is much more likely to completely miss it as he upset as he abrupt. Uh, you know, uh, we not only are we bad at reading intention and emails, but cinders, overestimate, how, how clear they're being.

[01:01:43] So, yeah, this is another problem with email communication. Why, again, synchronous stuff is, is vastly better. I think everyone who is going to go remote during this pandemic, who used to work in an office is seeing this it's like, man, you know, we would have just worked. We normally would have been discussed in a [01:02:00] meeting.

[01:02:00] We're now discussing in an email thread and it's more contentious than it needs. And thanks seemed more contentious and that's because we're stripping out all this information that we have that typically comes along with our interactions when it's not just through email. So when you're doing something like let's try to move a collaboration to synchronous means and keep email for click communication, be lighthearted, keep jokes in it.

[01:02:24] You be jovial. Like you do all the same things, but still push people towards like, great. This is great. Oh, this is complicated. Yeah. Let's jump in. Let's jump on. Let's hop on the phone and talk about it. Just like grab a slot here. I'm always available from 10 to 11, every weekday, just like jump on my zoom channel and we'll, we'll work it out.

[01:02:41] Um, be friendly and nice and whatever your standards are with, with, uh, motor cons or however you typically, you know, you need that because we're very bad at getting intent, but still move that interaction to the places where it's gonna be. 

[01:02:55] Mark Pearson Freeland: This is such a huge, huge one. And what a great [01:03:00] clip to close on, because I mean, how many times, Mike, maybe in your past, have you received an email and you've kind of got to read it a few times and think, whoa, am I, am I being harsh?

[01:03:14] Have these, have these individual, has this person read it in this aggressive way? Or am I being too sensitive to it? Or maybe I've sent something that I need to send to check. 

[01:03:23] Mike Parsons: Yeah. I love the way he's describing, like your, your writing, the email in your head and imagining all this, all this nuance and flavor and context and color that you're giving it.

[01:03:34] None of which none of which gets in the actually email. So when people get it, they're like true. And I think, you know, this is the thing with written communication, uh, is, it is a. Paul replacement of in-person conversation and problem solving. 

[01:03:55] Mark Pearson Freeland: Uh, I, I totally agree. And it's a challenge that obviously every [01:04:00] business and individuals had mostly around the world over the past year or so, isn't it.

[01:04:06] Mike Parsons: Um, and I, you know, a few practical things here, I would always say whenever you're drafting an email and you find yourself putting in it in draft and coming back to it and being a bit unsure of how to write this or that, that is the tell of don't send the email. You are trying to send something sensitive interpretive, or maybe collaborative even, and you get on the phone, get on like a zoom, get on if you can get together in person, do that.

[01:04:35] Um, I think, you know, inverse the process, the email should be the summary of the great call you had to work on. 

[01:04:45] Mark Pearson Freeland: Yes. The summary of what you've, where you've discussed. That's 

[01:04:49] Mike Parsons: nice. Yes. And the email could be, Hey guys, here's the preread before the meeting, before we actually collaborate, but it shouldn't be the collaboration itself.

[01:04:59] I mean, this is [01:05:00] the poor channel selection we have of using media. The wrong way. Email is not the meat here of the sandwich. It's either the pre or the post. Um, and don't, don't try and make it do the job of an in-person meeting because it can't, it cannot do it. It cannot do it. Huge model. Very powerful, very, very powerful stuff.

[01:05:25] So then mark, in, in, in the, um, uh, in the 12 step program of email anonymous here, how are you feeling? Uh, how have you reexamined your attitudes and use of email? What changes after delving into the world of Cal Newport and a world without 

[01:05:44] Mark Pearson Freeland: email? Well, I think, you know, from a practical perspective, whenever we, whenever I'm in the middle of some deep work and focus, I'll put on the do not disturb settings on my devices, but actually in truth, when I turn them off [01:06:00] or when I allow the notifications, I've still got my email.

[01:06:04] Constantly pushing emails. So I'll have the Gmail app, it'll be sending me emails. So the first thing I'll do once we wrap today, Mike I'll turn off all notifications for emails and my devices. So that the only way I can do it is if I go and manually refresh. And my reason for that is I think the lesson that I'm taking from today's show and Cal Newport's book, a world without email is taking ownership, taking ownership of how I interact with the platform and changing the way that I, that I'm using it in order to become more focused 

[01:06:35] Mike Parsons: and more fishy.

[01:06:37] That's huge, man. That's huge. Um, you know, Turning off the notifications is huge. I hadn't done that. I would, I just would not trust myself with email notifications. The other thing I did is I took social media of, um, the home screen of my phone. So it's not there to tempt me. Um, I'm still working through this [01:07:00] attention thing and I'm, I'm doing everything I can.

[01:07:03] And, um, for me, the most profound thing was just how we've all just allowed email to take over the world of business, sort of in a unconscious way where like we've just woken up and gone. Yep. Emails kind of 

[01:07:18] Mark Pearson Freeland: owning everything that totally, totally. 

[01:07:21] Mike Parsons: Well, mark, thank you to you. And, and it's just so good to hear that that notification setting is changing in a matter of minutes, my fists and freelancers.

[01:07:30] Well, well done, and thank you to you. All of our listeners, the moonshot is those of you who are learning out loud with us in an effort in a tip of the hat, to being the very best version of ourselves. And today that was done with Cal Newport, one of our favorites, uh, one of our favorite favorite superstars that we can learn from, and today we studied his brand new book, a world without email, and it does kind of sound a bit too good to be [01:08:00] true.

[01:08:00] And it started with a journey in understanding just how challenging focuses and all this ad hoc communication can really lead to us being very distracted. And you know what, it's all a result of email being at the heart of business, but it kind of took off. The whole show and it is contributed along with social media, to the hyperactive hive mind.

[01:08:24] Yes, we are running and multitasking everywhere here, there everywhere. And now is the chance using. Uh, well, without email to have a more sustainable workflow because we're do a revolution and that is embodied in two principles, the attention capital principle and the process principle attention capital is all about treating our focus, our energy, our attention as a very, very rare resource.

[01:08:54] And the process principle is having this centralized place way of working and to let the process take care of [01:09:00] itself, get it out of the inbox and into the single source of truth. And if we do this, we can use email so much better in a pandemic year in a world of lockdowns. And COVID where meetings face-to-face seems so hard.

[01:09:16] We can still make better choices. We can use email before or after, but we can still come together. We can collaborate, we can build great things and that's what we're here to do on the moonshots podcast. So that's it for the moonshots podcast. 

[01:09:33] Um,